Sunday, December 12, 2010

Bush Tax Cut Betrayals: Republican Betrayals and Other Liews

Did you know that it is a LIE that the proposed tax cut compromise will add 1% to growh in 2f011? Yes, I am talking about the very economist Obama says he listens to ("Zandy", or some such name--doesn't matter as economists are always wrong, and amonmng The Stupidest People on Earth--as an occupational group, and this point is obvious except in that Obama's favorite economist admitted that public discourse and opinion on the Bush tax cut compromise is being distorted by misleading propaganda).. Yes, there is some excuse for the Obama lie--when you take into account he has no idea what he is doing, but no excuse at all for the mainstream media (which also does not know what it is doing, but is dam well supposed to know how to find out, which could also be said of Obama, except that they all are only interested in agenda).

What one of Obama's favorite economists, who Obama quoted on this very thing, said was this (on the Bush tax cut compromise): "When I said that the Bush tax cut compromise announced by Obama would add add a full percentage poijt to the growth of the economy in 2011, I was NOT saying that the bill would add a full percentage point in growth from this year's level. I was comparing the expected growth rate if the compromise is passsed with the expected grwoth rate if we RAISE TAXES by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Since the Bush rates are the rates currently in effect, and are scheduled to expire, doing nothing will have the effect of raising taxes. But passing the compromise will NOT have the same stimuls effect as reducing taxes, since the main tax rates will remain exactly the same as they presently are. In fact, there will be a 35% INCREASE in the 'death tax' 'for the rich'."

You will note that the above is not an exact quote from Obama's favorite economist. The terminology is basically mine. But the substance is his, as well as being obvious (except to Obama supporters and the mainstream media--a redundancy). It is impossible to get a "stimulus" from keepng the taxes the same (except for a minor, and incalculable, psychological effect destroyed by the two year limit of the proposed extension). Now it is true that this economist said the bill would have a "stimulus" effect, bt he based that entirely on the SPENDING and "tax gimmick" parts of the bill (really welfare payments targeted at specific taxpayers, as the government continues to pick winners and losers in the nature of what Daniel Silva ("Moscow Rules") and I call ECONOMIC FASCISM (state capitalism, or "socialism with a capitalist veneer"). Daniel Silva used the term to apply to today's new Russia. I use it to apply to our Democrat AND Republican politicians. (I really am THAT close to f final vow never to vote for ANY Republican again, except those totally on the outs with the establishment of the Republican Party--which would mean I would not vote for, for example, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Mike Pence, Governor Pawlenty, and so many other conservatives. It is already true, as it was true of John McCain, that Hell can frfeeze over and I still will not vote for Newt Gingrich. As stated in my last two articles, I have not yet made that decision based on the initial terms of this disgraceful, "politics-as-usual"", compromise, but any change in the terms or new betrayals by Republicans over the next two years are going to push me over the edge. It will be one of the disappointments of my life if I never vote against Obama in my life, even as I will never have voted for him. Right now, I think it is more likely than not that such will be the cross I have to bear--almost as shameful as having helped raise TWO feminist lawyer daughters.)

The question the Obama favored economist answered, by the way, was from Chris Wallace on Fox News. What is interesting, but not surprising, is that Wallace--a mainstream journalist at heart--immediately forgot all about the answer he had got, and was talking on his Sunday afternoon broadcast as if he had gotten the opposite answer. Why is it so important to realize that the only reason that extending the Bush tax cuts was/is so important is that you simply do not raise taxes during a deep recession, or trying to come out of one. FDR once said it was the single biggest mistake he made in his political life durng the Great Depression (where FDR FAILED to get us out of the Great Depression with massive government action--instead having to wit almost a decade for World War II)?

It is important because the minor "siimulus" parts of this bill--nowhere near 900 billion dollars because most of that represents tax rates that are remaining the SAME) has alreaedy proven a FAILURE. Need I remind you of the Obama?Pelosi?Reid "stimlulus" of more than 800 billion dollars over about two years--much more than the ADDITIONAL spending and tax cuts in this proposed compromise. That Obama "stimulus", as he keeps reminding you (while lying about the details of the situation), was a combination of tax gimmicks (welfare for taxpayers our economic fascists have decided to make winners) and spending. How do you know that the 2 percent welfare payments disguised as payroll tax cuts will not work. Remember the Bush/Obama/Democrat "stimulus" of the spring/summer of 2998? The $600 checks? Well, I remember, even if Obama, the Democrats who controlled Congress at the time, and the mainstream media have forgotten. That "stimulus" FAILED, even though the money WAS spent by the people who received it. The money did them no good, because it did nothing to get the economy and job market--not to metntion financial markets-on a solid, long-term footing. We have extended unemployment benefits all of these two years. It has not helped. It especially has not helped people get jobs. It has mainly benefitted those who--and I know several personally--who do not really intend to get a job. That includes one attorney who went to China, and still collected Massachusetts unemployment benefits using a Florida address. This kind of absurd policy merely promotes fraud and abuse, and bad habits by those (probably a majority, although a declining one the longer the extensions continue) who are really looking for work.

By now, you know Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing again and again with the confident expectatiion of a different result." This idea that government can SPEND its way out of problems by directing the free market, and regulating it with ever more control, is simply insane. It has not worked--ever. It cannot work (because no human being is infallible enough to make it work--certainly not Ben Bernanke, who did NOTHING to stop the financial collapse in the first place). You can see why Republican politicians have gone way past annoying me. They refuse to make these points. Even Jim Dement--one of those handful who I will excuse from the edict I am likely to place on each and every Republican--refused to really take on this absurd indefinite extension of two years of unempoyment benefits--talking about "paying for it", as if we are paying for ANYTHING. Until we get to an acceptable deficit, we are not paying for ANY new program. It is a LIE to say otherwise. Note how Obama--after saying that "PAYGO" ensured "pay as you go"--no longer mentions it. But he will--wometime in the future--as if that were one of the successes of his first two years ("solving" that problem). Obama will act like he--in his role as Liar-in-Chief) had not shown, by his own actions, that the PAYGO bill was a total fraud (as I said at the time). Republicans arfe going to do the same thing on debt and the deficit. Thjey are going to act as if they had not been TRAITORS to those principles--not years ago, but this December. The new Speaker of the House--come January--has already promised to not put togeteher "Christmas tree" bils, and back door deals. But he is in the process of facilitating one.

That is why I will blame ALL Republicans in Congress if Democrats manage to further "change" this bill (already bad), like TARP. The dirty little secret is that Republican leaders--not to mention potential "establishment" Presidential candidates--can STOP this compromise if they want to. Assuming they really believe it is good for the country, they could also be making it clear that ANY changes in the bill will guarantee its defeat (in private telling people who dont want to go along that they will pay a HEAVY prive for it). As I said in my previous article, Republicans also CAN stop the rest of the "wish list" that Democrats decided to get through in this lame duck Congress for totally political reasons (theirs, and Republicans who wuld not let them then, but may let lthem now, when they can run out the clock). Nope. I have had it. As I said in my previous article, I am at the Rublicon. I may not have Caesar's legions behind me--maybe the tea party does--but I am ready to cross. Once I do--and I will stick to it, as I stuck to not voting for John McCain, despite full knowledge of what Barack Obama was. Once I cross this Rubicon, the Republican Party will be totally dead to me--unless fully taken over by someone like Sarah Palin.

Note: Because of eyesight problems, this article is not even minimally proofread (and I type fairly badly, especially when I have trouble even seeing the result of what I type). I am tryig to arrange after-th-fact proofreading. You will know it has been done when this note is deleted on any article.

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